It was 7:30 AM in the city of Bodo – Norway – when I woke up on 11th September (so coming up for 2 weeks ago now) – and down in the hotel breakfast room, there the variety of food was similar to previous places (meaning massive), and I started with some fruit; and saw milk machines, coffee machines with multiple mugs and colours of teabag, 3 different colours of smoothie, several little water dispensers, a little fridge with ‘POST MILK GENERATION’ on the front, croissants and pastries, grapes and raspberries floating in something, and what seemed to be whole carrots and celery floating in something, a tube that said Original Kaviar on it, cheese, crackers, yogurt, a big toaster, a random cauliflower, lots of fish and cold meat, jars of cereal, and tiny little chocolate chip cookies.

By 9:25am, I finished my very nice cooked bit of breakfast, had an orange in my bag, and I went and grabbed a couple more biscuits. Then at 9:47 AM we went out of the door, and started heading down the street to see if we could find an earlier ferry to Svolvaer,(and I went along). A green truck had ‘ZEBRA’ on one side and ‘vegmerking’ on the back, several different buildings were peered into, and nobody at all was visible until a man with two dogs appeared – and he got out his phone and looked at ferry schedules for us, told us there was nothing earlier than the 5pm ferry, and a building that looked uninhabited and had two men with fishing rods on the quay behind it, was found to be the terminal.

They were the only living things visible at that point, so Mum gave up. RESEVERT PARKERING was on a metal building and MILJOCONTAINER was on a freight container, and then by the railway station we bumped into a bloke who I was told (and couldn’t remember meeting) we’d met last night – called Sven, and a chat about train services went on.

We began making our way back to the hotel, made it back to the hotel at about 10:30 AM, and on the front desk, the receptionist who’d been irritating yesterday extended our stay free, allowing us to stay in our room until 5:00 PM; then Mum got an espresso from a coffee machine and we went back to our room. On the beds I was told about Dormio chalet slippers, all the biscuits I’d knicked were made available on a napkin, and she got agitated by her e-mail account. Once she’d calmed herself, an e-mail from her brother was received, saying he’d keep a newspaper reporting on the recent events of the Queen’s death for me and bring it with them when visiting in October; I could hear bells continuing to chime somewhere outside, had a quick look on Twitter – and Queen was the top trend, followed by a ‘Accession Council’ (during which Charles was proclaimed King), and I was getting sleepy, and then I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 2:20 PM, when my legs were quite sweaty due to wearing jeans and being covered with a duvet.
It was very cloudy outside and traffic noise sounded quite loud when I woke up, Mum had been watching – via her tablet – the Queen’s coffin being driven through various towns and villages, and thought we should have some ice cream. Down in the cafe area, all of the ice cream seemed to have nuts in, but I thought I’d try one and picked one that looked minty, she got a sandwich, and then things were consumed back up in the room while the itinerary for the rest of this trip was looked through. The Queen’s coffin being transported from Balmoral to Edinburgh on a 6 hour journey today was being televised by the BBC (with some commentary) on the website (and when brought up on her tablet – the site said 100,958 people watching the page at that time); there was an extremely loud hooting noise somewhere outside here while preparations for the Queen’s lying in state and funeral were being reported on, as well as people signing books of condolence, a memorial river procession in Edinburgh, India holding a National day of mourning, and farmers holding a guard of honour with their tractors when the hearse passed in Aberdeenshire; and then the TV was turned off at 4:45 pm, and we left the room, and the hotel 7 minutes later.
After 1 wrong turn, we took the right one and found the ferry terminal, which was smaller than a London tube station, had two other people and lots of big metal lockers in it, and absolutely no sound being made by anyone in the building; then at 5:20 PM, the only other person visible or audible in it walked off. I got out my book, rain started 10 minutes later and some more humanity began appearing, one of whom was a woman wearing big false eyelashes, and I kept reading until 6:00 PM, when a small ferry sort of boat caused us to go down the passageway and sit in a sort of cafe place closer to it, where some more people were (were drinking alcohol of some sort), and we spent 30 minutes there.

At that point it seemed to be the time to move to stand next to this boat and a queue built up. I was quietly told I had big bags under my eyes, and at 6:40 PM, loud sudden noises started coming from somewhere, and a catamaran with ‘REGINE NORA’ on the back arrived. 7 minutes later we were boarding, a map on a little TV screen was showing the planned route of this ferry, we seated ourselves and lots of other people continued to board, including some teenage boys who stood by a food counter and pressed the little bell on it (and Mum thought they were all drunk). It was 7PM when the boat moved, the boys seemed to all be buying hot dogs, nearby islands were rocks mostly coloured with cloud, some teenage girls behind us were making loud noises, the map showing the boats route on a small screen was intermittently becoming adverts, Mum seemed to be falling asleep, then woke up again and quietly and repeatedly said she wanted a chocolate bar. The large bloke sat in front of us was making odd faces to his phone and taking photos of himself, and at 7:30 PM she got up, went to the food counter and returned with a big sandwich sort of thing and pot of some sort of yogurty museli stuff.

A bit more interaction and conversation seemed to be going on between the groups sat at tables, I ate half the sandwich, the boat rocked around a lot, and then Helnussund was stopped at (the boat seemed to be acting like a bus) – with two hours to go until our stop, and there seemed to be a lot of mist descending outside. A tube of Pringles was being consumed on one table when Nordskot was reached at 8:20pm, ‘Ankomst Nordskot’ was displayed on the screens, Feskbruke was on the big building behind the jetty, visible because of a few lights, and it was almost pitch black. By Bogey, several people were horizontal along the row of seats they’d sat down on, the people behind us were making rather loud noises, and the island looked quite inhabited – with lights on. The next one was Skutvik, and that was where the loud people got out at 9:15pm, and the harbour walls were lined with ginormous what looked like tyres for tractors – and we had one hour to go, and I could see one person horizontal along their row of four seats. At 9:30 PM things got bumpy, the horizontal person remained horizontal, Mum began vomiting several minutes after the staying in your seats announcement was made and a guard handed out sick bags. I was feeling extremely nauseous, fixated myself on a sign in the boat and clutched my bag, and remained like that until we docked – at a time I forgot because a nice bloke on the ferry asked where we were staying, said – when I told him the name of the place – ‘you couldn’t get any closer’; and I helped my mother in. Someone called Mo Dina on reception said – while I was checking in – they get a lot of seasick people in here, took the luggage up to the very nice room, then helped mum in and out of the lift, and into the room – where she went limp, and I took her shoes off and got her legs up on the bed; and tried to keep things reasonably tidy, realised the time, put my pyjamas on, and flopped.